If we were to believe the information we get
from the mass media internationally, we would get the impression that in
Venezuela there has been a general strike for the last one and a half months
and that president Chávez is an extremely unpopular and authoritarian ruler who
is about to be overthrown in a mass popular revolt. Nothing could be further
from the truth.

In fact, the “national civic strike” called by
the opposition on December 2, demanding Chávez’s resignation and early
elections has been a complete failure since the beginning.

When I arrived in Caracas on December 11, the
airport was working normally, as well as public transport (buses, coaches, and
the Caracas subway), shopping centers, restaurants, and bars. The basic
industries (iron, steel, aluminum, etc.), which are state-owned, were working
at 100 percent capacity because of the decision of the workers and their unions
to oppose the “strike.”

In the state of Carabobo, one of the most
important centers of manufacturing industry, the “Class Struggle” [group of
unions] and the “Democratic Trade Union Bloc” bring together workers from 52
different unions in the most important factories in the state (including Ford,
General Motors, Chrysler, Pirelli, Good Year, Firestone, MAVESA, and others).
These groups declared their opposition to the “strike.” Some of these factories
remained open, but in others the workers went to work and found themselves
locked out by the bosses. They demanded to be paid their wages, since they had
gone to work, and in most cases they were paid.

The same was true in some sections of the food
and beverages industry, which is controlled, almost in its entirety, by Grupo
Polar, which is owned by the powerful businessman and opposition leader
Mendoza.

This is not a strike at all, but a bosses’
lockout. The fact that this protest has the support of the Executive Committee
of the CTV, the main trade union federation in the country, should not fool
anyone, since this Executive Committee has never actually been elected. The
people who sit on it appointed themselves before the end of the balloting in
the extremely irregular elections of November 2001. This explains why it is not
recognized by most of Venezuela’s other union federations and by local union
branches.

The only part of the economy that was seriously
hit by the opposition protest was the oil industry. Here, a small group of
managers, directors, supervisors, and technicians organized the sabotage of
production and brought the industry almost to a halt. Oil production is highly
computerized and a few managers withdrawing their keys and passwords can cause
a lot of damage. They also made sure they fixed the administrative procedures
so that they would still receive their (very high) salaries while they were on
“strike.”

Also a number of captains and crew of some of
the oil tankers mutinied and prevented normal deliveries. It is important to
note that the oil workers’ union leaders, who in April had supported the
opposition-led attempted coup, this time did not even dare make a public
statement in favor of the “national strike.”

Workers Take Over Oil Industry

Slowly but surely, oil workers took over the
refineries and oil fields and started to get the industry back to normal. By
January 10, the state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (initials PDVSA)
was working at 50 percent of capacity.

The opposition protest has been accompanied by a
campaign of lies and half-truths and blatant manipulation of all the private
media, particularly the TV stations, which are also controlled by the
opposition. All TV stations suspended their normal programming to broadcast
only “news” about the success of the “strike” and gave all their commercial
breaks over to opposition propaganda.

To give just one example of the level of
hysteria which the opposition and the media are trying to whip up against the
government, when the government finally got a court order to take over the oil
tankers that had mutinied, the opposition claimed that the new crews were
Cuban, and that this was a further sign that the country was rapidly moving toward
“Castro-Communism.” This lie was repeated by the media, until a couple of days
later, having been directly challenged by the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry,
the opposition leaders were forced to retract their allegations and admit that
there were no Cubans working in the oil tankers.

At the beginning of January, the opposition,
faced with the failure of their actions to bring the country to a halt, decided
to up the stakes by announcing the closure of the banks and that schools and
universities would not reopen after the Christmas break.

Again, both actions failed. Most banks remained
open and those that did close only did so for 48 hours. In most schools around
the country the alliance of parents, teachers, and students guaranteed the
opening of the schools and colleges, in some cases against the will of the
headmasters.

As for Chávez being an unpopular dictator,
nothing could be further from the truth. The opposition has been regularly
calling demonstrations against the government demanding his resignation, and
they can manage to mobilize 100,000, 200,000, or even 300,000 people in the
streets, mainly from the rich and middle class areas of Caracas. What is not
generally reported is that the Bolivarians, as the supporters of the
revolutionary process call themselves, can get far bigger crowds onto the
streets. On December 7, right at the beginning of the opposition protest, a
massive demonstration of more than 2 million people took to the streets of
Caracas against the “strike” to defend the democratically elected government.

Lockout Polarizes Society

In fact, the result of the opposition “strike”
has been to further polarize society and to push many people who had not taken
sides to openly declare themselves against the opposition, which they rightly
see as being responsible for the fuel and food shortages. There have been many
instances in which people, queuing for hours to get petrol, have expelled
opposition supporters from the petrol station queues for having the audacity to
try to blame the government for the shortages.

Chávez is most definitely not a dictator. It is
in fact his supporters who are demanding that the government take stronger
action against the opposition, which is hell bent on overthrowing a
democratically elected government. The only people who are currently in prison
as a result of the opposition coup on April 11 of last year are actually
government supporters who were defending the presidential palace against the
coup!

Pedro Carmona, who appointed himself president
for a few hours following the coup, was put under house arrest for a few days
and later escaped to Colombia. The opposition newspapers (all of them apart
from two or three exceptions) carry numerous articles and editorials openly
calling for a military coup to remove Chávez and appealing to the armed forces
to overthrow the government, and no measures are taken against them!

There is a group of military officers who have
declared themselves in rebellion against the government, and instead of being
arrested they have been allowed to set up a permanent camp in Plaza Francia, a
square in the center of Caracas. (Mind you, these “courageous” individuals
leave their “permanent” camp at night to go to sleep in luxury hotels!)

Chávez and his government have been put to the
test in seven different elections since he was elected in 1998 and they have
won every single one of them. Furthermore, the country’s new Bolivarian
Constitution allows for all elected public officials to be subject to a recall
referendum halfway through their term of office. This includes the president,
who is up for such a referendum in August 2003. The problem is that the
opposition is convinced they would lose such a referendum and that is why they
are demanding Chávez’s resignation. What they did not achieve in April by means
of a military coup, they want to achieve now by a combination of economic
sabotage, chaos, appeals to the armed forces, and international pressure.

The reason why the local oligarchy and U.S.
imperialism are opposed to Chávez is that even his limited program of bourgeois
democratic reforms (land reform, maintenance of PDVSA as a state-owned company,
and the extension of political democracy, among other measures) and the process
of mass mobilization and organization which they have generated, directly clash
with the class interests of the capitalists.

Masses Taking Direct Action—Workers’
Control Spreading

But the very actions of the reactionary forces
are pushing the masses to take direct action and push forward their revolutionary
cause.

On January 10, for instance, 400 workers at
COVENCAUCHO (a tire company in the state of Lara) decided to take over the
factory and declared themselves on “strike against the strike” when they were
told that the company had decided to join the opposition protest. The oil
workers in one of the oil refineries had been running the installations under
workers’ control throughout the Christmas and New Year’s holidays. When a new
manager was appointed by the government to replace the old one who had joined
the opposition protest, he was told by the workers that he was welcome to join
them, but that the refinery was now under workers’ management.

Also, on January 17, the National Guard with the
support of the workers and the local population took over a Panamco beverages
warehouse in Carabobo belonging to the powerful businessman and oppositionist
Cisneros, and the general in charge of this operation justified his actions by
saying that collective rights came before private rights.

These are some indications of the deepening of
the process of the Venezuelan revolution.

The main discussions that are taking place in
the trade union and popular movement at the present time are about popular
control of the mass media, workers’ control and management of the state-owned
companies, occupation of privately owned factories, popular management of
schools, nationalization of the banks, etc. Through their own experience, the
workers, the poor peasants and the students are drawing the conclusion that the
revolutionary process, in order to be defended, must be strengthened and
deepened.

The most urgent task for revolutionaries in
Venezuela is the building of a conscious Marxist leadership that can help the
movement draw the necessary conclusions, and that is that the revolutionary
process must adopt a clear socialist and internationalist approach as the only
way to guarantee its final victory.